Too Young To Die: Inner City Adolescent Homicides

By Dr. Earl Bracy

Here at last is a comprehensive study that examines, via an extensive review of the literature, the psychological variables that contribute to black-on-black male adolescent homicides. And here also are clear direction signs for the future research that is needed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781648954719

Dr. Earl Bracy

Dr. Bracy candidly talks about his humble beginnings in the segregated South. He talks about his roots in Fairhope, Alabama, and how racial prejudice, injustice, discrimination, and racial stereotypes impacted his life and led him on a journey to improve the lives of others. He also shares his trials, tribulations, heartaches, challenges, obstacles, and joys. Many people do not fully understand the impact that discrimination and second-class citizenship have on a person's psyche. Dr. Bracy has lived through the era of Jim Crowism and is a witness to its negative effects. Dr. Bracy received his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and his master's and doctorate in clinical psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Bracy is also the author of Too Young to Die: Inner-City Adolescent Homicides and co-authored The Middle Generation Syndrome: (A Throw Away Society). This is the fourth book of Dr. Earl Bracy.

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Introduction

Because of the escalating African American male homicide rate, many social scientists are beginning to feel that the African American male is becoming an endangered species (Gibbs, 1984). Terr (1989) posits that many of these homicides occur because many poor inner-city African American adolescent males feel alienated from a society that does not recognize them and is not making a place for them in society. This alienation and rejection can easily cause the adolescent to direct his anger and rage on to others just like him. Bell (1987) stated that for every homicide that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, there were forty-four assaults serious enough to warrant police intervention.

Much research has been done on aggressivity in adolescent boys. Chandler (1982) provides empirical evidence linking specific causal attributions to anger arousal. He found that anger is when an individual holds another person responsible for the negative or harmful consequences of a social transaction. He further stated that when a threat or potential harm is perceived, attributing blame to others may serve as a defensive emotion-focused coping strategy that fuels anger arousal and increases the likelihood of aggressive responding, particularly among impulsive, under-socialized adolescents.

Boone (1990) hypothesizes that parental use of physical punishment and other power-assertive disciplinary methods tend to increase the likelihood of the development of aggressive behavior in boys. He also states that boys reared in households lacking adequate nurturance and praise for positive behaviors are prone to display negative behavioral patterns. These aggressive tendencies can often lead to homicides. What is most alarming is that the victims and perpetrators are becoming much younger. According to the Bureau of Statistics, in 1993, there were 3,647 teenage murderers. In 2005, the bureau predicted that annually, 5,000 such murders will occur.

Also, according to this projection, young men and women between the ages of fourteen to seventeen will commit these murders. This surge will be the greatest among African Americans (National Center for Injury and Prevention Control, 1990).

Today, the leading cause of death among young African American males is homicide (Poussaint, 1984). Bell (1987) reports that the homicide rates for African Americans are six to seven times greater than they are for Caucasians. Poussaint (1984) states that the murderer is psychologically impaired because of the hostile environment in which he lives. He suggests that the impairment comes in the form of low self-esteem, low self-concept, and self-hatred. These variables, he implies, intertwine to interfere with rational thinking on the part of the perpetrator. Further, Griffin (1991) posits that humiliation caused by racism and substandard living conditions cause a great deal of anger and rage, thus causing the adolescent to violently act out toward those who look like him. Projected self-hatred facilitates blind rage and gives the perpetrator of the violent attack a sense of legitimacy and justification (Poussaint, 1984).

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Review of the Literature: Theoretical Perspectives Related to Inner-City Adolescent Homicides

Deusch (1993) reported that African American children had significantly more negative self-images than did white children. He maintained that among the influences converging on the African American urban child is his sensing that the larger society views him as inferior and expects a decreased performance from him as evidenced by the general denial to him of realistic vertical mobility possibilities. With this in mind, it is highly probable that many African American adolescents, both male and female, tend to see a future that is hopeless and bleak.

In response to this feeling of inferiority, it is highly probable that many of these adolescents undertake a course of self-destruction and destruction of others who remind them of themselves. Under these conditions, it is understandable that the African American adolescent would tend to question his own competencies and, in so questioning, would be acting largely as others expect him to act. Merton (1980) called this a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very expectation itself is a cause of its fulfillment.

Oftentimes, parents tell their children that they will not amount to anything. The child in tum expects this to happen, and because he expects it to happen, often it will. The parents, consciously or unconsciously, have planted a seed of negativism. The child fulfills the prophecy that the parents have predicted for him. Many adolescents who are incarcerated report that they were told by their mothers that they would end up in prison. Others have said that family members told them that they would be in prisons just like their fathers. The adolescent may also expect to be incarcerated because most of his friends and peers have been or are incarcerated. He sees this as a rite of passage that has to be fulfilled. Also, if he thinks that society views him as someone to be feared and someone whose life is meaningless, he will fulfill this message through his deeds and behavior.

According to George Mead (1962), the self is formed through the individual’s interaction with other members of society—his peers, parents, teachers, and other agents of socialization. In the case of the African American adolescent, he/she learns to assume the role and attitudes of others with whom he/she comes in contact. In the process, the adolescent forms a perception of self. When the self and those who resemble the self are seen in a negative light, destruction to the self and others can occur. This negativism and self-hatred, if you will, contribute a great deal to black-on-black violence (Poussaint, 1984).

One should also realize that the vast majority of inner-city African Americans strongly oppose crime and violence and do not accept them as their norm. Curtis (1975) stated that a variety of historical and contemporary forces combine to produce a violent counterculture among low-income urban African Americans. He also posits that this counterculture is supported and reinforced by exaggerated aggressive masculine strivings by African American men who have been emasculated by institutional racist practices.

Silverstein and Krate (1975) studied African American males in Harlem and state that boys within their peer groups elaborated such personal traits as skill in fighting, physical bravery and daring, and an ability to outwit and verbally insult others. This behavior often provoked a violent response in others. The salient point that is made is that among low-income African Americans, as among other groups of similar stature, violence is sanctioned as an acceptable method of resolving conflicts and arguments.

What has been neglected in this exploration has been the analysis of the African American experience itself in a society that victimizes individuals because of skin color. In order to arrive at concrete intervention strategies, it is crucial to focus on the antecedent mindset of poor African Americans. Oppression has occurred in previous generations of older African Americans, and many of these oppressive symptoms have been passed down to the younger generation. Oppression has produced psychological scarring in many African Americans that may oblige them to be ready victims as well as victimizers (Poussaint, 1984).

Linehan (1989) stated that one of the greatest joys in life is to love and to be loved by others. When this emotion is not fulfilled, people often tend to act out in anger and rage. Young (1993) further stated that early maladaptive schemas can develop in childhood and result in maladaptive behavior, which reinforces the schema. Turner (1984) theorized that maladaptive schemas are reinforced over time that can further add to pathology.

Kardiner and Ovesey (1951) state that self-hatred is at the core of much African American behavior that is destructive to the self and the group. The self-hatred is a valuable theoretical construct because it lends credence to the concept of low self-esteem and rage among African Americans. This theory is also consistent with other theories that suggest a lower threshold for rage and violence among African Americans. In this view, socioeconomic, environmental, and family stressors combine with self-hatred to foster and trigger violent acts and homicide, which turns into a vicious circle.

A number of more recent studies suggest that negative self-concept based on skin color is no longer a problem among African American adolescents (Bass et al. 1982). Despite recent controversy, the self-hatred thesis is an important variable in black-on-black homicide and deserves continued exploration (Poussaint, 1984).

Bach-y-Rita, et al. (1971), gave psychological profiles to forty-three violent patients and found that, dynamically, they were dependent men with poor masculine identity and a sense of being useless, impotent, and unable to change their environment Although most of these men were white, their basic self-image resembled one that is often attributed to African American men as a result of being poor and black (Clark, 1965; Grier and Cobbs, 1968).

In the Bach-y-Rita study, it was found that violent episodes by these men were marked by a temporary breakdown of ego function and a disorganization of the thought process often induced by enormous rage. Curtis (1975), after determining that African American male violence is rarely planned or based on old animosities, posed two questions that have relevance to low self-esteem and self-hatred: What is it about street-corner male contexts that encourages head-to-head standoffs? Once begun, why do so many confrontations seemingly escalate into resolutions of serious injury or death? One must take into consideration that the two critical variables in such confrontations are low self-esteem and self-hatred, which predispose these individuals to explosive sensitivity to slights and